Some early slidably adjustable boat seats which typically were mounted on a pedestal secured or anchored to the boat deck utilized a pair of slidably engaged plates for adjusting the fore and aft or front and back location of a boat accessory mounted on one of the plates and a manually operable handle was used to apply pressure to bring the plates into tight frictional engagement to lock the seat at its desired location. U.S. Pat. No. 5,884,887 provides an improved more positive locking arrangement. The '887 patent describes in some detail the manner in which the plates are slidably engaged with one another for adjusting the location of the pedestal mounted boat seat and for that limited purpose is incorporated herein by reference. The '887 patent utilizes spaced recesses on one of the plates for selective engagement with teeth on a rotatable rod attached to the other plate to firmly lock the plate on which the seat is mounted at its desired location.
Although the fore and aft adjustment mechanism for a slidably adjustable boat accessory as described in the '887 patent has resulted in the user, e.g. one sitting on a boat seat, firmly locked in the fore or aft location, at times a side-to-side and/or front to back wobble may occur. This may happen while the user is adjusting the front-to-back location or may occur even though the seat is firmly locked in its fore or aft position. For example, the boat usually rocks while it is moving though the water, even at a low or moderate speed, which may cause the boat seat to rock or wobble sideways or front to back. It has been discovered that this can happen for a number of reasons, e.g. wear on the slide and locking members, accumulation of tolerances during manufacturing, temperature and weather variations, etc.